


Step Into the Epoch

by DekuPrince



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, set very very far into the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DekuPrince/pseuds/DekuPrince
Summary: There's a certain point where the immortal change in strange, unfathomable ways. To the point, really, where they can't be considered human anymore.





	Step Into the Epoch

* * *

  
  
It’s with a sense of detachment that you finally realize humanity has fled you.  


  


Your name is Rose Lalonde and you have lived for decades, then centuries, then millennia, and yet time never quite got to you like you thought it would. Dementia never set in, though memories often hung heavy and many in your head, dropping every once in awhile like overripe fruit to make room for something new.  
  


Like this, bit by bit, you forgot the little things. The mortal things, all etched away by Time’s rhythmic chisel.  
  


Love was the first thing to change from what you once knew, as was a troll’s capacity for hate. After a time everyone was simply too young. Ignorant of their ignorance as your eyes had started to glow with a constant, sunny light. At any given moment you were Seeing and reveling in knowledge and paths that led to your own good fortune; humans and trolls alike were simply beyond you now to connect with.  
  


In this way you think Sburb blesses those players with larger parties, because the other Gods are the only ones worth spending time with anymore. The only ones able to keep pace. All your friends and lovers were Gods now, after all.  
  


And wasn’t it funny that it’s a term you all used to downplay? Cast off with a roll of your eyes because what were you really other than traumatized children?  
  


With time you had all grown into it. Dubious heads lain on Quest Beds that had been obtained through, and you quote, “Shenanigans”.  
  


It’s at the point were centuries bleed into millennia turn to epochs that you completely leave the sphere of mortality and all it’s inelegance behind.  
  


Physically, mentally, emotionally.  
  


Your body changes. Everyone’s had, laughter in the air as you all had talk of the Puberty of Godhood. Personally, you were delighted, remembering the Eldritch you had never really fallen out of love with and understood more and more as Time ticked on.  
  


The Light of your Godhood shines from within you now, quite literally. It lights your throat when you laugh, and talk, and sing – spilling from your veins when Kanaya’s sharp fangs slip into your neck like a lover dips their dance partner.  
  


After some time your mortal coil can’t contain it and the Light splits your skin into patterns not unlike the long lost Japanese art of repairing something broken with gold. It’s an apt comparison. Time has broken you, but remade you with care into something stronger. Something better.  
  


Not that mortals are something to look down upon, and you don’t. It’s just that your benevolence has long since run dry for them, observing them instead with something akin boredom. Their foolish cycles no longer sadden you, their triumphs over obstacles of their own making no longer fill you with satisfaction. You no longer show the faithful the way without sacrifice.  
  


You no longer deign to shine your Light upon their dark, uncertain paths.  
  


You no longer see a reason to. How often have they spoiled your gifts? How often have they all tried to slip back into primitive madness of the intolerant? The unjust?  
  


During The Game your powers of Light were blinding. All the knowledge it offered had been intensified  as if shining through a magnifying glass, reduced to one blistering focal point.  
  


One path among many that would lead to salvation.  
  


Only one.  
  


Now, though…it’s more like a prism. Refracted, scattered. Some points overlap, some dimmer than others. No one destiny is “correct”. It began a time of truly testing yourself, weighing your own personal gain against the civilization you now reside over.  
  


It let’s your true potential shine through. No pun intended.  
  


Occasionally you slip back into the mortal realm, outside of the haven and paradise Jade had long ago created for retreat. Amusement catches your fancy for the mortals, sometimes, and you stalk the halls of the temples raised in your honor.  
  


Sometimes, an acolyte will be blessed with your presence, brought to their knees in agony as you make searing eye contact with them. It burns the sight from their very eyes and seems to impart gifts upon them. Blind prophets whose hair and skin turn your previous albino porcelain and are forever kept from the temptation of alcohol thereafter.  
  


Yes, trips to see the mortals are rare among many of you.  
  


Kanaya remains your strongest bond, something that transcends what someone with limited time is capable of. She’s the Sun of your existence that you orbit, but she does slip in and out of your arms every once in awhile. She may leave on her own whims, for her other lovers, on Slyph impulses, but never overlong.  
  


There are just so many things that can use her guidance in order to flourish. Broken things that she can fix, lonely things she can coax towards other lonely souls until they are no longer alone. Until it’s you that is lonely, and then she returns to you.  
  


She is endearing to you, this way. Once upon a time you would have been ashamed that she remains selfless while you keep your talents to yourself. Now, though, she just has added rarity among you all to still check up on the mortals in your charge.  
  


“Where do we go from here?” John asks you. His form has long since shaken itself apart, never to properly reform. He is all around you, transparent to the naked eye so that his question comes from many angles, in many voices, sigh soft.  
  


You think he spends the most time with the mortals out of any of you, honestly. His winds still guide the troubled, keeping them true to themselves as often as they play mischievous havoc.  
  


The occasional deadly mayhem is not outside him, either. All for fun, all in balance.  
  


“You’re so _consistent_ ,” you reply, eyes casting about so your lights reflect off of every bit of moisture in the air in faint rainbows. “My answer is the same as always; I haven’t seen more for us than this.”  
  


“Yet!” John laughs. He laughs and doesn’t stop for some time, allowing you to close your eyes with the knowledge you can doze to this sound like few others. Everyone has changed; the Gods have all grown into themselves, but being with John is the closest you ever feel to remembering what it felt like Before.  
  


Something nostalgic that you don’t exactly miss is born about him.  
  


“Dave?” You guess. Then again, your guesses don’t follow the definition of the word. Guesses for you are more like facts teased from a place that had just been obfuscated just by virtue of you speaking.  
  


“Dave!” John crows. “Oh, Dave, do you know where he is?” John presses closer in a lively cushion of warm air that threads spritely through your hair and delicately along your bared skin.  
  


“Don’t you mean When is Dave?”  
  


“Nope, not really. Point me to where I can find him!” He doesn’t say please, rustling your hair a little more insistently so that you’re forced to fan him away as your eyelids droop for you to begin your search. These days John is as likely to steal anyone’s breath and hold it a playful hostage until they’ll use it to tell him what he needs – or wants – to hear.  
  


You don’t need to breath, but that is entirely not the point.  
  


Looking for Dave among the Light is easier than breathing. Or not breathing. Either way you can pinpoint him despite his white hair and pale skin blending in with the brightness of Time’s stream. You can follow the red, though. Red streaks like blood in his wake.  
  


Red godtier hood and red eyes, along with more red eyes and darker red godtier garb.  
  


“He’s everywhere,” you say airily, smirking as you crack an eye to see John’s reaction to your play. You’re not lying. He can be anywhere at any time if he plans it well enough. Time isn’t so scary for him anymore when one’s loops don’t end in such tragedy over such small mistakes.  
  


The air in your lungs lessen until it gets distinctly harder to laugh, which, of course, only makes you laugh harder.  
  


“I’m right here dumbass turn around.” You stick your tongue out at John as air refills your lungs, wondering if he’s even forced to face one direction at a time in this form. He certainly stirs around excitedly the second Dave slips from Time’s folds, hand in hand with Karkat.  
  


You offer Dave your hand, too, and are pleased when he takes it and brushes his thumb over your knuckles.  
  


“Hey Dave! Hey Karkat! I was just wondering – ”  
  


“I know,” Dave cuts him off, though not unkindly. Karkat snorts with a roll of his eyes like he had wanted Dave to be a little more mean about it. He reaches out his dark hand and gently takes your free one so you can’t help but smile broader.  
  


That’s what Karkat does. His blood writhes under his skin like so many snakes desperate to be free, to get out, to fight and conquer. A grotesque display by mortal standards. But his connection to blood is so much more than that. More than bloodshed.  
  


He connects you, just as Kankri does. Here, among friends, he brings forth old memories. He dredges them up from your mind until they’re polished instead of rotted by time. Every good thing between the two of you, with Dave, with John.  
  


The golden blood in your own body responds to his Blood so that it’s ringing in your ears as it rushes along. You wonder if John feels it quite the same in his bloodless form.  
  


“Are you going to take us on a daring adventure?” You ask. Dave’s sunglasses have long since been discarded during the era most of you had given up physical items as important. Given up because, amongst yourselves, there was nothing left to hide.  
  


So it’s his naked gaze that burrows into you. Still his human red and white, and he looks so excited. There’s something new on the horizon and you don’t cheat him on his find by looking into the Light to see where it is you’re going.  
  


“Soon, yeah.” Soon to Dave is like guesses are for you. Soon is any time he prefers, maybe now. Instantaneous always from his point of view, but not so much everyone else’s.  
  


From the way he draws you just a bit closer, with John coalescing with a hand on yours and Dave’s shoulders, you think it’s the former. Now.  
  


_Now_.  
  


Another epoch is coming for you. One step further into the dwindling unknown. Time parts graciously under Dave’s guidance and you’re lead towards a new age.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a universe I would want to add more onto -- I think the possibilities for each character and how they would change are extremely fascinating to think about -- but I'm not sure if it'll happen. If I do this will be added into a collection rather than a direct continuation off of this fic itself.


End file.
